students

For one week, 11 art students at Cooper Union turned the top floor of the Foundation building into a media command center. They boarded themselves in with homemade wood and steel barricades, a hot plate, laptops, and cell phones; they issued communiqués, coordinated with students organizing on the outside via Skype, and talked with reporters. The move was an escalation in a series of salvos between students and the administration over the future of the school.

Free tuition for every student seems like a foreign notion, but for the students at Cooper Union, it is considered a right, because every accepted student, regardless of citizenship status or income level, receives a full scholarship. In order to manage the school’s precarious financial situation, which was exacerbated during the recent financial crisis, President Jamshed Bharucha announced the school would begin charging tuition to graduate students and more recently has hinted at the possibility of charging undergraduates tuition triggering a firestorm of dissent from students, alumni, and faculty.

“This was always in our minds as the next step,” said Tyler Berrier, a 21-year-old art student, and one of the eleven students who participated in the lock-in.

While initially the occupiers declared they wouldn’t leave the room until their demands had been met, including public affirmation of the value of free tuition and President Bharucha’s resignation, they left because they said they had accomplished what they had set out to do: spark a larger conversation around the value of higher education.

The occupying students worked in concert with other students who organized teach-ins, rallies, and hosted a series of lectures with academics, artists, and activists speaking about the burden of student debt. They worked in tandem with activists at Occupy Wall Street and broadened their scope to include students from CUNY and other schools.

“It was more of a catalytic action that would bring people together,” said Berrier.

The prospect of student debt is not far from Cooper Union students’ minds. According to a study by the Institute for College Access & Success, student loans average $25,600 per student for the class of 2011, up 5% from the previous year. Tuition at Cooper Union is valued at $38,550.

“It’s not something that I have to think about, having been able to go to Cooper, and being able to afford my living expenses,” said Casey Gollan, a senior in the school of art and another one of the occupiers talking about student debt. “But all of my friends deal with it.”

“It doesn’t seem like a sustainable solution for the world where students are given so much debt and they have to spend most of their lives paying it off,” he said.

Cooper Union is one of only a handful of schools that still offers its students a full scholarship. Founded by Peter Cooper, a member of the working class who eventually became a wealthy industrialist during the Industrial Revolution, free tuition for all has been a guiding principle of the school. Despite his eventual wealth, Cooper always considered himself part of the working class.

“He did not think of himself as a capitalist because he had come up from the trade and was largely uneducated,” said Peter Buckley, a historian in the humanities department at Cooper Union, who is currently working on a book about the history of the school. “It was supposed to be a free education for the working classes .” Cooper began the school as a night school so that working men and women “who wished to improve their chances in life” would be able to attend.

In order to cover operating costs, Cooper had a system where a small class of about 15 students, who could afford it, paid tuition to defray the costs for the rest of the students. This model continued until the early 1880s until the Cooper family rented out two floors of the Foundation Building that sits on Cooper Square and eradicated the amateur program. In its first capital campaign the Cooper family, along with a generous donation from Andrew Carnegie, established the school’s endowment.

In the August letter, President Bharucha tasked each of the three degree-granting institutions—Arts, Architecture, and Engineering—with the unenviable job of coming up with a solvency plan for their department, resulting in outcries from students, alumni, and faculty—many of whom believe that it was an underhanded move to force faculty to make the uncomfortable demand for undergraduate tuition.

“At the moment, they are outsourcing the decision, because even the trustees don’t want to be the ones getting rid of 100 years of tradition,” said Buckley.

“They are doing this work that is fundamentally against the mission of the school, their personal beliefs as educators and they are being intimidated into it,” said Kristi Cavataro, a junior in the art school, and one of the occupiers. “I know those of us in this room have a lot of faculty support in what we’re doing.”

Other groups have offered alternative financial plans, chief among them is Friends of Cooper Union, a coalition of alumni, faculty, and students dedicated to keeping the school financially solvent while protecting its centerpiece of free tuition for all.

“They’re building out these hybrid programs,” said Henry Chapman, a spokesperson for Friends of Cooper Union and a 2010 alumnus of the art program referring to establishing new graduate programs as a means to generate revenue. “It’s an extremely questionable path.”

Rather than pursue these revenue-generating graduate programs, which would require startup costs and which would not surmount the shortfall for the foreseeable future, Chapman argues that the school should focus on expense reduction while remaining a tuition-free institution. Friends of Cooper Union believes that implementing a tuition charge would ultimately work against the school because it would lose its main selling point, and ultimately make it less competitive.

“Tuition would certainly influence who applies and who elects to accept Cooper’s enrollment offers,”he said. “It would also diminish Cooper’s prestige and ability to attract leaders in the field of each discipline.”

Many students, faculty, and alumni believe that what is at stake is more than mere tradition, but rather an educational philosophy that has become endangered.

“Even a small embodiment of 19th century idealism can seem so unexplainable to a lot of people today,” said Professor Buckley. “These dreams were alive that anyone with talent could have a free higher education.”

“A lot of people want to look at Peter Cooper and the history of this place, but to me the stronger argument is the state of higher education today,” said Gollan. “It doesn’t make sense to give the next generation chains from the get-go.”

According to Buckley, Cooper himself would be horrified by the burden of student debt. “Debt was for his class a form of enslavement,” said Buckley. “I do think that if he were alive today he would see that college tuition loans were making a new form of enslavement for the American middle class.”

For now, students and faculty will have to wait to see what happens. The school has announced that it won’t make any plans until the new year.

“I’m just not willing to give in to that’s the way the world works,” said Gollan. “If we can stand up for it here and other places too like CUNY, it’s not going to have to be that way. Higher education is really worth it. But that cost can’t be passed to students over the course of the rest of their life.”

At P.S. 41 in the West Village, the kitchen is already turning out lunches almost completely in line with new federal regulations. The new rules went into effect last month and require fewer processed foods and more healthy ingredients. This pizza bagel is made with freshly-cooked sauce and olive oil instead of blended oils. Photo by Edna Ishayik

Judging by the joyous grade school cafeteria clamor, Pizza Fridays are the favorite menu line up of the students at Public School 41 in the West Village. On a recent Friday, the kindergarteners through fifth-graders bit happily into their gooey, cheesy, saucy lunches.

Warmed over toaster-oven pizza, this is not. Here, the mozzarella is fresh, the sauce is cooked in the morning, and the bread (bagels, in this case) are whole wheat. In fact, nothing that comes out of the school’s kitchen is processed. Everything is made from scratch.

That was the case even before new federal regulations that will upgrade the quality of the food school kids eat at lunchtime went into effect last month. Across the nation, cafeterias now will be forced to provide a healthier meal for their young customers. Schools will be switching from tater tots to sweet potato fries, ditching hot dogs for kidney beans, offering more vegetables and removing many processed foods.

But in New York City, meals mostly meet, and in some cases exceed, the standards now required by federal law.

“The City has been ahead of the curve when it comes to offering more nutritious meals to students,” said Marge Feinberg, a Department of Education representative. “With the new USDA guidelines, there are some factors we need to review, including costs associated with the new policy, but we support the push towards healthier, more nutritious food choices for students.”

She said restrictions on the amount of trans fats children are served have already been met, as have the low sodium standards. There will be some adjustments necessary to catch up with the grain-rich requirements and weekly saturated fat count, but Feinberg categorizes these as nearly complete.

In the kitchen at P.S. 41, the food served goes far beyond what the city or the new federal regulation asks. For example, though the new standards require only that blended oils be substituted for oils that contain trans fats, P.S. 41 goes further, using olive oil in many cases. It’s a healthier and better tasting alternative that costs considerably more.

P.S. 41 can afford the splurge partially because it’s a wealthier school in a neighborhood where the apartments can cost tens of millions of dollars. But the bonus actually comes from a donation through a partnership with a non-profit called Wellness in the Schools. WITS places a trained chef in the kitchens to push nutrition and healthy eating to it’s potential.

“We take what they used to do, and enhance it,” says Shani Porter, the WITS resident in P.S. 41’s kitchen.

One of the group’s sponsors, high-end supermarket chain Whole Foods, gifted olive oil to the 30 schools enrolled in the program. And that olive oil was another ingredient Porter used to upgrade Pizza Friday.

Last year, Porter was stationed at a school in East New York. Though the poverty level is higher in that neighborhood, the quality of what was served for lunch was essentially the same as what her new West Village students were served.

“There’s no difference,” she said. “All the schools go from a procurement list. They all get a budget depending on how many kids the school serves. Everything is the same.”

And the procurement list already meets the new federal standards.

But the delivery of a healthy lunch in East New York carries an important weight. Porter said that meal was often the only real meal many of kids got all day, so if it wasn’t nutritious, the kids were at a severe disadvantage.

Porter said the healthy food has been well received. The staff must keep an eye on the lettuce levels in the small salad bar set up near the kitchen because the kids come back for seconds.

Sometimes when a new food is added, like freshly-made vegetarian chili, some of the younger kids balk.

“They see anything green or anything brown and they say, ‘I want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,’” Porter said.

But she counsels patience when it comes to testing young palates.

“Once they start to learn, then you don’t see that,” she said. “It takes a few times for the child to really like the food. You have to, not push it on them, but expose them to it. Teach them about it. Let them try it a few times.”

And when all else fails, sometimes Porter will allow for sandwich for a particularly picky eater. But even the jelly is healthy: Porter cooks down dried fruit and makes compote to spread between slices of whole wheat.

Since New York City schools are so close to complying with federal rules, even those without Porter stewing dried fruits and dicing tomatoes are eating healthier meals than their out-of-city counterparts.

Undocumented students from NYSYLC participate in DREAM Graduation Ceremony in Washington, DC. Photo by Juan David Gastolomendo

Guadalupe Gracida crossed the border from Mexico into Arizona on foot. From there, she and her parents drove to New York, spending over two days in an uncomfortably crowded van, crushed in with almost 40 others.

It was a dangerous month-long journey—the family was robbed, and at one point had to hide in a safe house for over two weeks. Gracida was 14.

With hopes of a better life, her family settled in Elmhurst, Queens where she entered school and laid down an impressive track record earning A’s and B’s in her classes.

But when senior year came, the reward of higher education was not around the corner. Though she was accepted to Queensborough Community College, she could not attend. It wasn’t a valid social security number that blocked her from starting school, nor trouble with Immigration Services. Instead, she would not be entering college because her family could not afford the annual $3,600 tuition.

Gracida was partially prepared for the disappointment. “I knew it was going to be hard for me,” she said.

Her story of struggling to fulfill the dream of graduating from college is only one of many. There are approximately 345,000 undocumented students across New York. Some may never hope to sit in a university classroom, but for those that do, tuition is a main barrier.

Recent political moves however, could make it easier for Gracida and others like her to find the funds to realize their higher education ambitions.

The New York State Board of Regents voted on a resolution on November 14th “to support the extension of the state’s Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) to all students, regardless of immigration status,” according to the organization’s website. The decision will set off a process that could result in a new law for the Empire State. It would open taxpayer funds to undocumented students seeking higher education—a group previously barred from eligibility.

If passed, New York would join only two other states in making state aid available to immigrants living in America illegally.

Under the proposed plan, approved applicants could be awarded up to $5,000 per person per year to offset the cost of college—an amount that for many undocumented young adults could make the difference between dreams realized or repealed.

For Gracida, one of the approximately 10,000 undocumented youth who would now qualify for funds to put towards TAP-approved universities, those dreams meant majoring in psychology and taking a minor in history. She hopes to work with kids and teens in schools, to counsel them through what she sees as a troubled time in their lives.

But without the cash to pay for tuition, and college deferred till at least next year, Gracida is going down a path well-worn by undocumented youngsters—looking for low-earning jobs after high school graduation despite the potential for more.

“I’m looking for anything that comes. In this recession, nobody has jobs and with my status, I have no social security number, it is harder for me to find a good job,” she said.

Though it will be difficult to save enough money for tuition while earning low wages, Gracida is undeterred. “I believe at the end, the most important thing is my education. I am going to take the time and the resources. No matter what, I’m going to graduate one day,” she said.

Though students in New York do have a leg up over the college-bound in other states, for undocumented youth like Gracida, tuition remains out of reach. Albany allows illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition making it significantly more affordable. Queensborough costs a New York resident $3,600 for two full semesters of up to 18 credits. An out-of-stater would pay $5,670 for two semesters of 12 credits each.

But even $3,600 a year is unmanageable when earning under $20,000, the average annual income for Mexican Immigrants according to the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative, anti-immigration group.

The Education Equity for DREAMers Act, if passed through the New York State legislature, could help Gracida, and students like her, to close the gap and pay for school.

But there is a long legislative road ahead before the plan goes into effect. The resolution for a proposed bill, was passed by the Board of Regents, but the law must now be drafted by that body.

According to Natalia Aristizabal, the Youth Organizer with the immigration group, Make the Road New York, the proposed bill must then be sponsored by state leaders in both the Senate and Assembly and brought to floor of each house.

Aristizabal has been following the proposal closely and says that if everything goes smoothly, it will be introduced in Albany early in the next legislative session—perhaps as soon as January. She says it’s even possible that the bill could be voted on before February.

But opposition for the measure may rear its head. “This is a tough time for a bill like this. There’s not even enough money right now to offset tuition costs for legal, documented New Yorkers,” Republican State Senator Martin Golden said to the New York Daily News.

A version of the bill was voted down by the state legislature last March. But that potential law included big ticket, controversial elements like state drivers’ licenses and access to health care. The new iteration focuses exclusively on financial aid.

Unlike the federal bill that has languished on the Hill since 2001, the state-level law would not seek to blaze a path to citizenship for students, only help them along as they attempt to make the best of living in America without legal documentation.

This is a significant flaw of the measure according to anti-immigration advocates.

“If you say that we should legalize folks, then of course we should offer them the same public services we offer others, but the question here is, how do you justify scholarships to people who are not supposed to be here?” said Steven Camarota, Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies based in Washington, D.C..

Camarota said there is an inherent contradiction in the argument that government should help build an educated workforce when the people seeking aid are explicitly barred from holding a job in the United States. He questions the idea that undocumented students graduating from college will even be able to find better-paying work.

“It’s harder to get a job as an accountant or school teacher, a college educated job. There, they tend to check documents,” said Camarota. “It’s much easier to be a hotel maid.”

And, he said, there are opportunity costs. “If you spend money on illegal aliens that’s money you can’t spend on other things.”

Camarota said this could mean sacrificing anything from fixed pot holes to school aid for legal immigrants and native Americans.

He would call someone like Gracida a “compelling anecdote,” someone with a sympathetic story that focuses policymakers on the benefits of this kind of immigration policy.

But for Gracida, who feels like she grew up in America, who came of age in Elmhurst, this policy is not just about her.

“I am another young person who wants to succeed, not just for my family but also for my community,” she said. “There are a lot more DREAMers that they are already graduated, that they are working in many low paid jobs. And they are wasting their potential.”

Protestors held a rally with students from all over the city in Union Square today and marched along Fifth Avenue. Photo by Nicole Guzzardi

Groups of NYPD officers stood armed at every corner inside the Union Square subway station this evening watching Occupy Wall Street protestors as they chanted and expressed opinions to anyone willing to listen. while outside in the square, students from all over the city joined protestors to rally against the 1 percent.

Protestors gathered inside the Union Square station to try to engage commuters in conversation by sharing personal stories, hoping to highlight problems faced by the 99 percent.

“It’s to talk to people about what’s going on,” said Joe Chavez, 28, a protestor from East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “It’s not to shut the subways down, its not about taking them over. It’s about sharing our stories.”

The Occupied Wall Street Journal is the Occupy Wall Street Movement's personal newspaper, disseminating news about protests and the change they wish to see. Photo by Nicole Guzzardi

Michael Levitin, 35, from San Francisco, Calif. is one of the five editors of the paper. He was handing out free papers for commuters to read on the subway, further spreading the occupiers’ message. Levitan said the paper is funded by the more than 1,600 donors from around the world. The paper’s fifth issue, which will be a national one, will be launched next week.

Meanwhile, above ground, protestors and students from schools all over the city gathered at Union Square to hold a student rally and march along Fifth Avenue.

Ally Freeman, a student from the New School, attended the OWS student rally today in Union Square. She took out student loans for her education and worries about student debt affecting people her age. Photo by Nicole Guzzardi

Ally Freeman, 18, from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a literary studies major at The New School, said students are especially affected. She takes out student loans to pay high tuition prices, and said it’s time for young people to speak up.

“It’s really important that we be here, to show just because they’ve moved us out of Zuccotti Park doesn’t mean there isn’t still this movement,” Freeman said. “We’re still here and we’re still fighting.”

As for the threat of losing their home base of Zuccotti Park, some protestors said they aren’t worried.

Tielor McBride, 25, a protestor from Kansas City, said you can take an idea out of anywhere and the lack of space won’t slow down the movement.

“It was never about the park, it exists in the minds and the hearts of the people that believe in it,” he said.